If you haven’t seen the movie Chalk yet – you need to get on that. If you have Netflix you can watch it instantly on the “watch now” thingy. It’s a mockumentary about teaching . . . and it is awesome. Clearly, I should not be a professional movie reviewer. Here’s the trailer:
I love when Mr. Lowry yells at his students because it reminds me of me. I am totally ineffective when I yell, and I sound ridiculous to boot. My voice gets kind of high pitched and I can never think of good things to yell so I really just sound stupid. I think I yelled a lot in the first two months of teaching – to be honest, I was kind of out of control (just like my students, since I was doing such a crappy job of keeping the class in order). I also cried once or twice, but (THANK GOD) that never happened in front of my students.
Whenever my Hopkins supervisor (who I'm kind of obsessed with – he’s an amazing and supportive guy) came to observe me, I would (pretend to) be very calm and I never yelled. He always complemented me on that and said that it made me an effective “classroom manager”. So, I stopped yelling even when he wasn’t around, and lo and behold, he was right – it made me more effective.
Although, when that kid threw a marker at me toward the end of the year . . . yeah, I yelled.
1 comment:
Yeh, classroom management has to be one of the hardest tricks to pick up. I had a veteran teacher tell me "Don't smile before Christmas". Those first couple of weeks, you can't just be strict. You have to be Hitler's guru. Then, once they're in line, you can lighten up. It NEVER works the other way around, being the kiddies' pals and then trying to rein them in.
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